Early Engagement with the community is one of the best ways to build a place that locals will embrace.

by Juanita Hardy

Creative placemaking, an innovation that involves bringing art and culture in tandem with design to the beginning of a real estate development project, is gaining momentum around the globe, from small rural communities to large urban areas.

Read more about how the Sugar Hill Project is leading the way at Urban Landhere.

A child shares her story at summer camp at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling. Photo by Michael Palma.

For over 30 years, Broadway Housing Communities has developed its own formula for meeting the housing needs of West Harlem’s lowest-income residents. One of its unorthodox ingredients has been art galleries, and now, there’s a children’s museum in its newest building.

By Keli A. Tianga

The history of New York City’s Harlem neighborhood is deeply rooted in the tradition of art and storytelling. Longtime residents sit on building stoops, watch passersby, and take note. They are the oral historians here, in the birthplace of the African-American cultural revolution of the 1920s–30s, known as the Harlem Renaissance.

They also hold the memories of more recent events, such as the race riots of the 1960s and the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, which ripped apart Harlem’s social fabric, block by block.

Read more about BHC’s pioneering effort to incorporate the arts into its affordable housing programs at Shelter Forcehere.

Danya Sherman began research on the ArtPlace Housing field scan with the hopes of understanding how creative strategies help build sustainable and healthy communities of opportunity. She saw firsthand how powerful arts and culture are in articulating complex dynamics of urban and community development; in raising the flag to indicate where need exists; in providing crucial emotional support and connection; in helping to cohere diverse communities, and so much more. Here, she breaks it down into 6 ways the arts can help housing.